


The men we might have been

by newtypeshadow



Series: SuperSuperSorcererHusbands Fics [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Civil War Fix-It, Fix-It, M/M, Multi, Multiple Selves, Multiverse, Polyamory, Soulmates, Superhusbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 05:29:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23006494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newtypeshadow/pseuds/newtypeshadow
Summary: Husbands and soulmates Tony, Steve, and Bucky never thought they'd wind up back in the Siberian Winter Soldier Bunker they destroyed years ago, but that's where they find themselves when a battle hurls them into an alternate dimension. Here in the MCU, the bunker's still standing, and there's a man inside with a video he claims will tear the Avengers apart.And he's right.Good thing the three of them aren't this dimension's Avengers.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: SuperSuperSorcererHusbands Fics [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1858762
Comments: 67
Kudos: 593
Collections: Dimensional travel tony fica, MHEA Harlequin Hoopla Prompt Challenge 2020





	The men we might have been

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Marvel Harlequin Hoopla Challenge](https://heamarvel.tumblr.com/harlequin) Suspense prompt 20: Soulmarks.
> 
> Betaed by the wonderful [betheflame](/users/betheflame/). Any mistakes you find are here because I'm a stubborn fool.

If Steve and Bucky didn't want Tony purposely getting himself punched through an interdimensional portal after them by the Avengers' monster of the week, they shouldn't've married him—and they _definitely_ should've objected to the "whither thou goest" clause he stuck in his wedding vows. They're Catholic, so biblical promises are their thing, not Tony's—he's agnostic. That should've tipped them off. But they didn't say anything when he promised he'd go wherever they did, so really, Steve has no right to be pissy with Tony now that he sees Tony meant that literally.

"What were you _thinking?_ " Steve says in that emphatic way he has that makes Tony feel like he's being yelled at even though he technically isn't.

"I was thinking I'm your best shot at getting home, and I was _thinking_ if I wanted to live in a world without you two in it I wouldn't've married you, asshole."

"Jesus, Tony," Steve sighs, and knocks on his faceplate. "Up."

Tony obliges by retracting his helmet—

—and finds himself being kissed like there's no tomorrow by his husband and soulmate Steve Rogers Stark. Steve pulls away just far enough to rasp, "Thanks," against his lips, then kisses him again, short and sweet. Finally he admits, "I'm glad you're here, Tony."

Tony feels Bucky approach more than he hears it. "Hey, doll," Bucky says as he retracts his goggles and respirator mask. "Glad you could make it." The way he grins and rolls his eyes at Steve makes it clear he heard Steve's habitual "you could've gotten hurt/died/hurled into God-knows-where for the rest of forever" freakout and its inevitable resolution where Tony gets kisses and feels no remorse for his decision beyond worrying Steve.

Luckily for Tony, Bucky's the spouse and soulmate who usually skips past the panicky blowout and straight to sweet nothings and kisses, so Bucky pulls him straight into a kiss that tells Tony how relieved Bucky is to see him, then fixes his hair from the tangle he's made of it and rounds out their husband huddle with a grim look on his face.

"We're in the Winter Soldier Project bunker in Siberia," Bucky says without preamble. His tone is as calm and focused as it is with any mission, but there's a tightness around his eyes Tony associates with surround-sound nightmares and rough, haunted days.

The last time they were in this bunker was years and a dimension ago, when Bucky walked the team through it scrounging for material Tony could use to figure out what damage they'd done to his head and, thus, what was needed to undo it. After which they'd reduced the place to rubble with extreme prejudice. None of them thought they'd walk these dreary corridors again, in their own dimension or any other.

Yet here they are. And the place is still standing, which means they've either gone back in time, or this world's Avengers—assuming they have any—haven't found this place yet. Well, might as well give 'em a leg up. "Did you find the other Soldiers?" Tony asks.

Bucky nods. "Dead. Watched a special forces type kill them in cryo. Didn't recognize him."

"Did he see you?" Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head instead of raising an eyebrow and sassing back, which is unusual for a mission where the danger to them is negligible. That puts Tony on edge even more than the cold, gray cement walls and memories do.

Steve nods. "Alright. We find out who this guy is and if he's a threat. Then we see if Tony's alive in this dimension and ask if our Tony can use his equipment to get us home."

Their agreement is swift and silent as their footsteps—Tony hovers rather than walks—and they soon find themselves in the giant circular room with the Winter Soldier cryo tubes which, as reported, are slowly leaking frigid air into the already cold Siberian bunker through a single neat bullet hole each.

While Tony scans and runs assessments with JARVIS's help, Steve talks to the mystery man and Bucky watches their backs, rifle at the ready. Mystery guy's an asshole named Zemo, apparently. He recognizes the three of them and hates the Avengers, which bodes well for their chances of getting home quickly, but not for their chances of escaping without hearing a villain monologue. Zemo notices Steve's got flecks of green in his blue eyes, and is really creepy about it; Steve is very much _not_ his husband, so why the hell is he looking that hard? He declares the green flecks proof that Captain America isn't perfect—which Bucky and Tony could've told him with confidence.

The man has put ketchup on mashed potatoes more than once. _Ketchup_.

When their soulmarks for him didn't abruptly vanish when he did it the first time, Bucky declared it proof God has a sense of humor, as if the fucking platypus and Justin Hammer weren't proof enough _something_ out there thinks it's funny. (News flash: it's _not_ funny, and it really needs to stop.)

Zemo says something about the Avengers tearing themselves apart and presses something from inside his panic room that starts playing a grainy video on a monitor next to Tony. Tony and his husbands shuffle around to find out what this thing is that's supposed to irrevocably destroy the Avengers, and see…

Exactly the thing that would tear the Avengers apart.

Tony sees a familiar highway.

This is the video of the Winter Soldier killing his parents. This is the video Bucky insisted Tony watch before agreeing to live in Avengers Tower. This is the video that left Tony wracked with guilt the first time he realized he wanted to kiss Bucky's pretty, stupid, smug mouth, even though he knew before they met that Bucky was his other soulmate; Steve had seen both Tony's marks, and shown Tony his. It's how they'd known Bucky was alive seventy years after his apparent death. It's why they started looking for him, and eventually brought him with them to this bunker.

If Tony's honest, knowing Bucky and Steve were both his soulmates, and that shutting out Bucky would mean losing Steve too, was a big part of why he went flying for five hours instead of immediately repulsoring Bucky in the face. He'd wanted to hurt Bucky so badly, even knowing his actions as the Winter Soldier weren't technically his fault. Staying his own hand and removing himself to process alone was one of the best decisions Tony's made in his unnaturally long life. He can't imagine his life without Bucky in it—or his team, or his workshop, or his bed. Their wedding rings would look incomplete without Bucky's adamantium band weaving in and out of the gold-titanium alloy and vibranium strands for himself and Steve.

In the video, the crushed front of his parents' car smokes into the tree it careened into. A bike pulls up with a familiar rider in an outfit Tony's only seen once, and hoped to never see on Bucky again.

He can't watch this. Not again. Even this tiny portion is going to crawl into his nightmares and out his throat in screams that will wake his husbands and send Bucky skittering off to "give Tony space" that Tony doesn't want or know what to do with.

And according to JARVIS, Bucky's about to have a panic attack.

"We're not doing this again," Tony mutters. He shoots the monitor into the smoking crater Zemo must've hoped it would leave Tony's heart, and looks up at him with murder in his eyes.

"But—" Zemo sputters, "don't you want to see what he—"

"I've seen it. I know what he did," Tony snarls, and points a hand at the panic room. "I'll cut him out, you grab him," he tells his husbands.

"Holy fuck," Tony hears himself say—or, rather, another him say.

Iron Man, Captain America, and the Winter Soldier are standing warily in the wide doorway looking at Tony and his husbands with shock in their postures, if not visible on all their faces. Their uniforms are old. Well, Iron Man and Cap's uniforms are old. Their Tony must not be making uniforms for Bucky yet; it looks like he's just wearing an off-the-rack leather jacket with a sleeve ripped off.

Weird.

"Okay, who the fuck are you?" Iron Man asks, not lowering his hands from his defensive position.

"We're _you_ , dumbass," Tony growls, still enraged and focused on Zemo. He doesn't shoot the panic room though; Steve waves at him to hold his fire. Tony tries a few deep breaths to help himself calm down. In the meantime, Steve and Bucky shift subtly, readying themselves for a fight should their other selves prove hostile.

"I don't understand," Zemo mutters. "Why are there _two_ of you?"

"We're not from your dimension," Steve tells their counterparts, going full Captain America and stepping forward. "We planned to find you for help getting home, actually. But we ran into him first and he thought we were you, so we played along. Thought we might save you some trouble. Can't be too careful when you run into a stranger at a Hydra base."

"Especially a guy that hates the Avengers," Bucky adds. He seems to have calmed down more than Tony's managed so far. Then again, missions tend to do that for him. It's after they're safe in the penthouse that all the panic and angst set in.

"Something about Sokovia," Tony says. And then, to be a dick back to the dickbag hiding in the panic room, he lies carelessly, "Dunno, wasn't really paying attention."

"He says he framed me for murder to get you here?"

"He did," the other Captain America says, and pointedly holsters his shield on his back.

When Steve does the same, everyone relaxes.

Except Zemo, who's getting red in the face. "How can you fight alongside him?" he yells at Tony.

Tony strides up to the panic room and sends some nanoparticles into the locking mechanism, and from there into the panic room speakers. He's pretty sure if Zemo thought Iron Man finding out the Winter Soldier killed his parents would break up the Avengers, then this dimension's Iron Man doesn't know yet, and hell if Tony's going to let him find out when _his_ Bucky's within shooting range.

"Does family mean _nothing_ to y—" The panic room's speakers cut off abruptly.

Tony raises the panic room door. Puts his hand over the muzzle of the gun Zemo points at his own face before he can shoot it, and hurls the gun away. He then jabs Zemo in the throat so the miscreant won't be able to speak again, won't be able to ruin another set of soulmates' days with what he knows about Tony's parents. Holds him up by his asshole neck so close he can probably see flecks in Tony's eyes too. "The _Avengers_ are my family," Tony snarls, "and they mean _everything_ to me."

"Babe," Bucky says warily.

Tony takes a moment to glance at him and away from Zemo's purpling face.

"Cuff him," Steve says firmly. "We'll give him to SHIELD and go to the Tower so you and their Tony can get us home."

Captain America clears his throat. "About that… SHIELD doesn't exist anymore."

Tony eases up on Zemo's throat, in shock if nothing else, and gives Steve the slow blink of a cat before JARVIS alerts him to the presence of an actual one: a new presence in the room he identifies as Black Panther—most likely T'Challa—with ninety-eight percent certainty. "Better plan," Tony says, and stalks close enough to the dark hallway T'Challa is hovering in that tossing Zemo at his feet won't do any lasting damage. Well, no damage Shuri can't fix, anyway. " _You_ take him. We'll try the Tower first, but if we need Shuri's tech to get home we'll call you. She always loves this multiverse shit."

Black Panther steps into the light and pulls Zemo to his feet in a hold that's half guide and half carry. "I will take him," T'Challa says in his steady, solemn way, "but I think you will find things are somewhat different here than where you are from."

They find out how "different" on the Quinjet Steve and Bucky apparently stole from the Avengers, which aren't a thing anymore because of some legalese to do with Zemo's Sokovia grievances. And since most of the Avengers are fugitives now, and apparently this Iron Man and this Bruce made an evil robot baby that blew up the Tower, the team regroups in Wakanda, with a pit stop at the Avengers Compound to pick up Nat and Rhodey, and another at the Raft prison to break out everyone else—because apparently the Raft is for superheroes now, not supervillains.

They find out the Scarlet Witch in this dimension is not a psychotically evil supervillain, but is in fact a perfectly nice young woman and Avenger nursing a giant crush on this dimension's version of JARVIS, who goes by Vision and has a vibranium body and is also part Mind Stone and evil robot baby. They find out the Avengers don't know anything about Thanos, much less the other infinity stones on Earth that he'll probably show up to collect. Weirdest of all, they find out that not only do their counterparts not have each other's soulmarks, _no one_ in this dimension has soulmarks. Here, soulmates are a romance trope, not reality.

"So you just have to _guess?_ " Bucky asks incredulously, as Tony studies everyone's blank wrists with horrified fascination, and they in turn peer at Tony, Bucky, and Steve's three matching marks—marveling when they're told Bucky's soulmark for Tony always appears on any arm they attach to him.

"I definitely would've shot Bucky if I'd hadn't known he was my soulmate," Tony admits, realizing now what would've happened had Zemo told this version of himself what really happened to his parents.

Bucky sighs and tugs him close, kisses his temple and rubs his back.

Sam squints at them. "That's not weird to anyone else?"

"Eh, it's kinda sweet," Clint says.

"It's a little weird," Rhodey agrees, ignoring Clint.

"Your whole dimension is weird," Steve shoots back, judgemental but correct. He kisses Tony's other temple and stands to claim the pilot's seat. Unlike Nat, Steve has actually flown to the palace at Wakanda before and knows the signal to flash to ensure their plane won't get shot down.

Curiosity cuts through the wistful expression this dimension's Tony has been hiding only marginally better than his Steve and Bucky since their soulmarks and wedding rings came up. "Why were you gonna shoot Bucky?" he asks, because of course he does.

"I'll explain later," Tony promises, leaning into Bucky's hold, frighteningly aware now of the awful, loveless life he could've had. This team is friendly, but they're not _family_ , not like the team Tony, Bucky, and Steve built in their own dimension. For a panicky moment, Tony fears he'll never see the rest of their family again.

But it's only a moment.

Because Steve summons them to watch through the viewport and see if Wakanda's any different—since the rest of the world clearly is—and then Tony's leaning against Steve's firm shoulder and wrapped in Bucky's steady arms. The three of them _will_ get home. With two Tonys, a Shuri with Wakandan tech on the way, and presumably either a Sorcerer Supreme or fledgling Stephen Strange to fall back on, there's precious little chance they'll be stuck here. Tony and his soulmates will be home soon, back with their family and a world that makes sense.

And in the meantime, maybe they can help these Avengers from this black mirror dystopia become the family they were always meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed the fic! ^_^ If you did, please use kudos and comments to let me know—I _live_ for them! ♥


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